Category Archives: Art

Cities and Memory: “Remix and reimagine the world of shortwave radio”

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I’m absolutely chuffed to announce that the excellent Cities and Memory sound project has partnered with the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive for an all-new take on the soundscape of cities, and YOU are invited to be part of it.

From Cities and Memory:

Open call – remix and reimagine the world of shortwave radio

Shortwave radio is one of the most fascinating sonic worlds – capturing vital moments in world history as well as pirate radio, clandestine stations, secretive number stations and military and spy radio, all of humanity is there to be listened to at the turn of a dial.

We’re delighted to have teamed up with The Shortwave Radio Archive to present 100 incredible recordings from the history of shortwave radio all over the world for artists to remix and reimagine.

Shortwave Transmissions is our latest global project, and we’re calling for sound artists and musicians to get involved by reimagining shortwave radio recordings from across the world.

Here’s how to get involved:

    1. Email us to let us know you’re interested – and we’ll send you the database of recordings to choose from.
    2. Let us know your top two choices, and we’ll allocate one of those sounds to you to work with.
    3. Create your composition – it must contain some elements of the original recording in some form, but otherwise is a completely free composition (music, sound art, radio art, composition, narrative storytelling – everything is valid!).
    4. Submit your composition – the final deadline will be Sunday 14 November.

There are some incredibly rich recordings to work with as source material – here is just a sample selection:

    • Recordings from the mysterious “numbers stations” around the world
    • Coverage of world-changing events such as 9/11, the invasion of Kuwait, Kennedy’s assassination, Tiananmen Square protests, the death of Fidel Castro and many more
    • Rare international recordings from St. Helena, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia, the Falkland Islands and Antarctica
    • Recordings covering a huge period of time from 1934 through to the present day
    • Space travel documented, including the Sputnik, Apollo and Challenger missions
    • Recordings of famous voices such as Winston Churchill and King George V
    • Station IDs, interval signals and final broadcasts from radio stations

Compositions will be presented in the Shortwave Transmissions project in late November and to thousands of listeners across the Cities and Memory podcast, and a selection of compositions will be chosen for an accompanying album release. 

Sound artists and mixers, jump in to the Archive and see what you can unearth from the depths of our audio. We hope you’ll want to part in what we believe will be one of the most intriguing projects we’ve launched; in partnership with Cities and Memory, there’s no doubt it can be.  We look forward to your contributions!

Click here for full details at Cities and Memory.

Carlos Latuff’s shortwave radio logs are a work of art

For those who don’t know, our friend and SWLing Post contributor, Carlos Latuff, is not only a devoted radio enthusiast, but also a prominent political cartoonist in Brazil and throughout the world.

Recently, Carlos has been posting his shortwave logs on his Twitter feed and they’re pretty amazing.

Carlos’ shortwave logs not only include comments and notes from each broadcast, but also his own artwork.

Here’s Carlos’ recording of Vatican Radio which accompanies the log at the top of this post:

Click here to check out Carlos’ Twitter feed where he posts his political cartoons and, yes, even the occasional shortwave listening log!

If you’ve been a reader of the SWLing Post for long, you’ll notice that we’re not a space for political discussions; there are much better options out there on the Internet. Here, we stick to the world of radio, but we can’t help but highlight this intersection and Carlos’ creative logs.

In fact, Carlos, I might nudge you for that Vatican Radio recording and your artwork to post on the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive!

RCA Radio Tours Map circa 1934

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My friend, Maristella Feustle, recently shared this classic RCA “Radio Tours” map of North America. RCA printed this in 1934–during the Great Depression–when most people could not afford to travel. Their map encouraged families to use their radios to travel the world over the air and experience local culture & music.

As Maristella pointed out, the detail on this map is pretty darn amazing.

Click here to download a high resolution image of this RCA map.

Help Ed identify this mystery radio in “The Last Man on Earth”

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ed, who writes:

Recently I’ve been watching some pandemic-themed movies and found “The Last Man on Earth”, a pretty good 1964 post-apocalyptic science fiction horror film (which was remade in 1971 and 2007 with different titles.) In this film, the main character (well played by Vincent
Price) uses an HF transceiver in a fruitless effort to find other survivors of a global plague. It was shot in Italy, and the transceiver doesn’t look like any American radio I’ve ever seen. Perhaps some of your SWLing Post readers can identify it?

BTW: SWLing Post readers might also be interested in knowing this film can be downloaded for free from The Internet Archive.  https://archive.org/details/lastmanonearth-1964

What do you say, SWLing Post Community? Is this radio a fabricated stage prop, or a real model?  Please comment!

In the meantime, I’ll add this post to our ever growing archive of radios in film!

Spectres of Shortwave: Amanda Dawn Christie’s film about RCI Sackville now streaming

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IMPORTANT UPDATE – Amanda Dawn Christie notes:

“Unfortunately [this video] was never supposed to be public – it was an accident on my part. The film will be viewable soon though, for seven days. May 26 to June 1. It is being hosted by a gallery in Montreal. That upload was only a test for them, and should never have been public. I was in a hurry, trying to get it uploaded before I packed my hard drives before I moved and I guess I didn’t check all the settings. Sorry about that. I appreciate the enthusiasm though.”

SWLing Post friend and filmmaker, Amanda Dawn Christie, has just uploaded a version of her film Spectres of Shortwave to Vimeo where it can be viewed free of charge:

Click here to watch on Vimeo.

The story of a 1970s CB Radio QSL card print house

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ulis (K3LU), who shares the following story of a popular CB Radio QSL Card design and print house:

73s and 88s :: The Ballad of Runnin Bare and Lil White Dove

We set a custom screensaver on Our AppleTV. Told it to pull images from Flickr tagged with “British Columbia.” After my wife and kids and I spent a few weeks in Vancouver and in various places on Vancouver Island, it had become one of our favorite places. We missed it.

And so, at night, after a show or movie ended and the AppleTV sat idle for a few minutes, a slideshow would automatically begin. The Parliamentary Buildings in Victoria, the Inner Harbor, the wild, rocky, tidepool-rich shores of Tofino, the murals of Chemainus.

Then, every once in a while, an illustration of some sort. I couldn’t tell what. A one-panel comic? Some kind of advertisement or flyer? It would be gone from the screen before I could really get a good look. Weeks would go by and I wouldn’t see it until, once again, there it was. It looked old, like something from the 60s or 70s. And it had numbers on it, like a code or a message: 73s and 88s.

It was the numbers that got me. Like the park rangers in The Shining calling for Wendy Torrance on the radio: “This is KDK-1 calling KDK-12. KDK-1 calling KDK-12. Are you receiving me?” They seemed to be saying something. But what? I had to find out. So, I took to Google, and began my search.[…]

Click here to continue reading the full article.

FYI: Although the CB Radio landscape is quite different than it was in the 70s, most modern shortwave radio receivers can tune to CB channels. Here’s a quick tutorial from our archives.